


Story Time and Things That Go Boom

by salienne



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crack, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-21
Updated: 2008-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:11:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salienne/pseuds/salienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Completely AU crack. The adventures of three girls and a TARDIS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Story Time and Things That Go Boom

**Author's Note:**

> Since seeing Journey’s End (and even before), I’ve thought that Donna, Rose, Martha, and the TARDIS would be the best universe-saving group ever, and with them, who needs the Doctor anyway?
> 
> Special thanks to [](http://ashe-romeo.livejournal.com/profile)[**ashe_romeo**](http://ashe-romeo.livejournal.com/) for word ideas and [](http://hippiebanana132.livejournal.com/profile)[**hippiebanana132**](http://hippiebanana132.livejournal.com/) for some Brit-speak. Any errors, though, are mine, and feel free to point them out!
> 
> Dedicated to [](http://biggrstaffbunch.livejournal.com/profile)[**biggrstaffbunch**](http://biggrstaffbunch.livejournal.com/) who kicks the writing world’s communal butt, and is just overall awesome. I hope you like it, hon’!
> 
> Spoilers for Journey's End, if you squint

It might’ve been the blue wire, or the red, or the yellow, or the mauve, and Donna was getting tired of listening to them bicker about which was going to get them all killed first. “Oi,” she snapped, “just pick one already!”

“I did,” Martha replied. Pliers in hand, she tried another jab toward the yellow wire. Again, the back of Rose’s right hand blocked the attempt. “ _Someone_ ,” Martha continued, “won’t let me finish the job.”

Muttering “Ow” to herself, Rose shook out her hand while glaring daggers—sharp ones, with serrated edges and poisoned tips and possibly a few angry ninjas as backup—at her supposedly medically knowledgeable and UNIT-trained companion. Her left hand continued to hover over the broken-open backside of the Mercian bomb. “I told you,” she said, “this happened in my universe, same building, same hostages, same bomb, same everything.”

“They don’t have mauve in your universe!” Martha countered. “You said there wasn’t even a fourth wire.”

“No there wasn’t. But cutting the yellow one alerted the Mercian smuggler we were there and almost got us killed.”

“I’m telling you, it’s the yellow one,” Martha said. “UNIT’s got files on the Mercians, and they’re color-blind. The only color they can make out is yellow. Now if you were building a bomb, wouldn’t you wanna know which wire to cut to disarm it?”

“I don’t think I’d build a bomb, do you?” Martha gave a very exasperated sigh. “But think about it—you’re a Mercian, yeah? An’ everyone in the universe knows your weakness. So you build a bomb. What d’you do? Make a big flashing neon sign tellin’ the rest of the universe how to disarm it, or mix it up a bit? Make it so you’ve got to cut the other wires, all the wires _except_ the yellow one.”

“Fine. Assuming your right, which I’m not saying you are, how d’you suppose we cut all three wires at once?”

“I cut two, you cut the other one.”

“An’ how would the Mercians do that? They’re built like giant walking kettles. Can’t exactly partner up.”

“ _They have three arms_.”

“On your world, they had two!”

“It wasn’t my world!”

“God,” Donna muttered, leaning back on her haunches and pocketing her own pair of pliers, “you two’re worse than me an’ Nerys at her wedding.”

The glaring contest Martha and Rose were currently engaged in would have put the eyelid-less warriors of Kriskor Seven to shame, and the way they examined the gutted gadget splayed beneath their fence-like fingers was reminiscent of two very determined, very angry women ascertaining the best way to ply off one another’s fingers before finally disarming a bomb.

As such, it took several long moments for either of them to realize just what Donna had said. With a frown, Rose glanced over at the friend she did not currently wish to throttle. “Hold on, Nerys is married?”

“Yeah,” Martha replied absently, her attention still focused on the black and white cow-shaped bomb. Apparently, this disguise was meant to not only work but work in a church, right beside the altar. Before Mass had even started, they had been called in. “Happened last Christmas.”

Somewhat bitterly, Donna remarked, “Couldn’t even think up her own wedding date, the twit.” Her calves aching, she settled down onto her knees, her gaze drawn to the bomb for one very long moment. Then with a sharp jerk of her head, she looked back up at Rose. With some satisfaction, she continued. “Not like it lasted.”

The bomb’s timer continued to count down: 3:24, 3:23, 3:22, 3:21.

Her eyes wide, Martha looked away from the bomb entirely. “Donna, you didn’t.”

“That lump?” Donna scoffed. “Of course not. Unlike Nerys, I have standards.”

“Then who?” Rose asked.

“Her sister.”

“Seriously?”

“Serious as she was when she emptied their bank account, chucked his clothes in the bin, pawned the ring, _and_ bought herself a new car.”

“Well,” Rose said, “that’s one way to handle it.”

The bomb had a voice that was loud, high-pitched, and practically sparkled with friendliness. “Detonation in 3 minutes,” it announced. “Area of detonation: 5 square miles. Please locate the nearest emergency exit and run for your lives.”

“Least it’s courteous,” Rose muttered.

Martha, however. was having none of it. Bending over the weapon, she lifted her right arm, pliers primed, the two blades parted and pointing directly towards the back of Rose’s hand. “Right. Rose, stand back. I’m cutting that wire.”

“Like hell you are!” Her jaw set, Rose grabbed Martha’s wrist. “You’re gonna get us all killed.

For a long moment, the two simply stared at one another, the intensity between them so fierce, so ardent, that it seemed as if they would lean in and passionately gouge out one another’s eyes any second now.

Martha wrenched her wrist free from Rose’s grasp. “Everyone in a 5-mile radius is gonna die if we don’t do something,” she said. “We’re in the heart of London, Rose. That’s hundreds of thousands of people, dead. That’s women and children and just regular blokes going to work, and all of them are gonna die unless we disarm this bomb.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Rose answered. “And I’m trying to save them. Your way is just gonna blow them all up.”

“No, _you_ keeping me from cutting that wire is gonna blow them all up.”

“Oh you are not blaming this on me.”

“If you won’t—”

“That is it.” Before Rose or Martha could so much as turn their heads, Donna had snatched the second pair of pliers out of Rose’s pants pocket and stood. Now with two pairs, she shoved her way between them and, falling back to her knees, pushed their forgotten finger-fence out of the way. The pliers in her left hand she placed on the yellow wire, the pliers in her right hand on the mauve. “You two, get ready to cut those two wires,” she ordered. “I’m doin’ these two. We cut ‘em all on my signal. Counting down…”

Neither Rose nor Martha moved.

“Donna,” Martha said, “you can’t just—”

“5,” Donna said, “4…”

“Donna!”

“3…”

Eyes wide, Rose and Martha shared a panicked, she’s-bloody- _insane_ sort of look.

“2…”

Rose positioned her pliers at the blue wire, Martha at the red.

“You two ready?”

Rose and Martha nodded.

“1.”

With a communal clipping sound, the four wires snapped. Rose held her breath, Donna clenched her jaw, and Martha shut her eyes. All of them waited. They waited for what could very well be the end—right here, right now, at the hands of a cute, somewhat fuzzy, tiny ticking cow.

Rose was the first to speak. “Oh my God,” she laughed, “we did it!”

“We did it,” Martha repeated, her voice tinged with awe.

“’Course we did,” Donna said. “No thanks to you two wallies.”

The sound that left Rose’s throat was one note short of a squee, and grinning, Martha and Donna let themselves be pulled into a hug. Laughter bubbling out of all of their throats, the three women held onto one another, allowing themselves to bask in the fact that, together, they had managed to avert yet another catastrophe. Davros defeated, the man on the moon saved, the London underground still in London, and now a Mercian bomb disarmed. The new Team TARDIS. They were getting quite good at this.

Still smiling, they pulled apart. Donna was the first to look back down at the bomb, where the timer continued to patiently count down toward an imminent firey death.

“Oh you are kidding me.”

~-~-~

Two months ago TARDIS time, the Doctor had run into quite a bit of very familiar trouble, the end result of which was the use of the chameleon arch and a year (at least) spent undercover. Now he was at Torchwood 3 under the guise of “Walter Smith,” and, well, they couldn’t just leave the TARDIS for any Weevil or wayward Torchwood employee to stumble upon, could they? And they certainly couldn’t leave the universe unprotected.

And that was what they were doing now, protecting the universe. At this particular moment, however, after a day of two diffusions of the same bomb and the apprehension of three giant walking kettles, they were sitting in a circle on the console room floor taking a very well-deserved break.

“So I go into work, right?” Martha said. With her right hand she reached for her strawberry daiquiri and took a very contented sip. Each of them had a glass, a half-empty pitcher full of freshly blended daiquiri sitting roughly in the middle of the triangle the three of them formed. Martha had made this batch after they finished off a bottle of wine, and over the roar of the blender, they had managed to have a conversation about the long thick spouts on those kettle-aliens, the copious amounts of steam that were expelled when the Mercians became particularly excited, and how exactly such a species reproduced.

“You know, bit of a tedious day,” she continued, “time for all the staff members to get their annual physicals. ‘Cos they can’t just have a regular doctor do it ‘cos how’re you gonna explain away all the burn marks or the alien antibodies? So, first appointment of the day, this new bloke George is due in, except he never shows. Now that’s weird ‘cos UNIT’s a military organization; you don’t miss an appointment unless you’re locked in a cellar somewhere, and even then you call in.

“Now I don’t wanna turn him in ‘cos his captain would have his head so later on that day, I hunt him down at his desk. And it’s weird, ‘cos he’s on his computer but he’s standing. The chair’s right there but he’s standing all bent over the keyboard.”

“Ooh, I know this one,” Donna called out. She was on her second glass now, and the floor was just getting _annoying_ the way it swung every time she moved. “Mind-controlling chair!”

Rose snorted, grabbing her glass so that she wouldn’t spray her drink all over the plush, vaguely sentient sleeping bag they had spread beneath themselves on the grated floor.

“Now that,” Martha said, “I’d like to see.”

Clearing the sugary gunk from her throat, Rose sat up and rubbed at the stiffening muscles of her neck. Grimly she told them, “Trust me, you wouldn’t. Soon’s the chair realizes it’s gotta move about and can’t even use its wheels anymore…” Her gaze far away, she shook her head. “God that was a big fire.”

Her eyebrows raised, Martha just looked at Rose.

For her part, Donna simply adjusted her position against the coral support the back of her head rested against. “So was that before or after you got attacked by tea cozies?”

“After.” Turning her eyes up to the distant green-lit ceiling, her tongue at the roof of her mouth, Rose seemed to think back. “Yeah,” she said, “definitely after.”

Another moment passed, both of the other women staring at Rose, Donna the more incredulous of the two. Although Martha’s hands remained still, Donna didn’t hesitate before swallowing more of her daiquiri.

Bringing her chin down slowly, Rose remained pensive. Then widely, she grinned.

“I knew it!” Donna said.

Laughing, Martha reached for the bowl of crisps at her side and chucked a few in Rose’s direction, the larger pieces falling onto the sleeping bag. Several of the crumbs clung to Rose’s hair, the yellow-brown blending easily with the blond.

“Oi!” Rose yelled, though even she was giggling. With more than a little desperation, she combed through her hair with her fingers.

“God,” Martha said, ignoring Rose’s protests, “you’re worse ‘an the Doctor.”

The room spinning just a bit too violently for ease of movement, Donna reached between herself and Martha for the snack bowl and moved it to her lap, breaking up the impending Battle of the Food.

“Go on then,” she told Martha. “What was wrong with good ol’ George?”

Martha leaned her head back against the curved outshoot of the console, crossing her arms and raising her chin. “Well if you two will keep interrupting…”

“Won’t, I promise, temp’s honor,” Donna replied.

“Yeah,” Rose added. “On my…” With drink in hand, Rose let her arm swivel in the air, her lips curved into a frown. “On my _honor_ ,” she continued, her words punctuated by toasts of her daiquiri, said toasts punctuated by the swaying of her entire body, “as a blond Tyler, that’s Rose Tyler, _and_ a Defender of the Earth.” To complete the gesture, she brought the glass to her lips and swallowed deeply.

Martha, however, continued to hesitate, the smile on her lips hidden by the slow and patient sip she took. “Donna, pass me the crisps, would you?” she said.

A shrug, and Donna held out the bowl, allowing Martha to pick out a few unbroken and unburned specimens. Also slowly and patiently, she brought them to her mouth and bit down.

Rolling her eyes, Rose grabbed one of the crisp fragments off the sleeping bag and threw it at Martha’s head. Then she grabbed another fragment, and another, and another. “Well go on then!”

Laughing and squinting, Martha held up her hands. “All right, all right, fine!”

Finally, Rose’s onslaught stopped. A moment of peace and Martha allowed her hands to fall back down to her lap.

“So there I am at his desk,” she said, continuing her story, “and there he is, standing. And of course he’s all apologetic and givin’ me all these excuses ‘bout his wife and traffic, but there’s just something off about him. Like, he keeps fidgeting and glancing at the exit. Now this was my lunch break so I had the next forty-five minutes, hour free so I told him to come get checked out now. ‘Course he didn’t want to, had all these other excuses, but eventually I get him into the exam room. Give him a gown, tell him to change and tell me when he’s ready, the usual routine.

“And this, this is where it gets completely bizarre because I come back and that’s when I see it: there on his left buttock is a hive of chi-chis.”

At this point Martha couldn’t contain herself any longer; bowing her head, she half-giggled, half-snorted into her hand.

“And what’re chi-chis when they’re at home then?” Rose asked.

“Aliens,” Martha replied. “They’re like these little sprouts that conform into popular shapes, like um… diamonds or Christmas trees and things. America markets a nonsentient form of ‘em, I think. Chia pets, somethin’ like that. Anyway, there’s this bright green _thriving_ colony right there on his behind in the shape of…”

Leaning forward, Martha looked from Donna to Rose and back. Both were watching her, drinking and munching and enrapt.

“A winking smilee,” she said. “I’m not even kidding, one of those internet smiles like you’d type on IM.”

At this Rose had to curl up from the force of her guffaws, and Donna was close to snorting crisps from her nose, hardly able to breathe with that particular image in her mind. Some man’s butt, round and pale, and half of it winking.

“So o’ course I’ve gotta get his captain and the general and his team involved,” Martha continued, “and I feel awful ‘cos this poor man, he must be mortified! But we can’t just wipe out a developing hive and we need to remove it carefully so George doesn’t go into shock from the sudden removal of their excretions.

“So there we all are, the general, his captain, a negotiator, a nurse and myself, all talking to this man’s left buttock.”

Bent over, Rose clung to the sleeping bag—which squeaked rather discontentedly—and gasped for air around the spasming in her abdomen and lungs. With her left hand she groped for Martha, grabbing onto her arm. Struggling to talk through her laughter, Martha nodded and put her hand atop Rose’s. Donna continued her own hysterics in silence, laughing too hard to even put much oxygen into the effort.

“Eventually,” Martha continued, then snickered, took a deep breath, wiped the tears from her eyes, and started again. “Right, so eventually we transfer the hive to a specially-made aquarium, but chi-chis, they-they leave behind this gelatinous secretion that keeps feeding chemicals into the host’s system, and if you don’t get it off quickly, it sinks into the skin like, um, like tattoo ink. Green tattoo ink. But remove it too fast and it’s dangerous to the host.”

“No…” Donna said, her eyes wide.

Nodding, Martha tried desperately to hold back her laughter. “Yeah.” At this, she lost the battle and brought a hand to her mouth, cracking up anew. “We—we had to leave it on for a few hours, just to be safe, and when we finally wiped it off… When we finally wiped it off he had this very vivid forest green tattoo of a winking smilee there on his bum.”

Rose and Donna were practically on the floor now, gasping with eyes watering.

“I tried to try to remove it, really I did, but it’s just about impossible to get those marks off and George just ran away fast as he could.”

Through her hysterics, Rose managed to say, “I bet he did!”

“That man’s poor wife,” Martha said, “I dread to think how she reacted to the whole thing.”

Rose was the first one to calm down enough to form a coherent sentence, but the one she came out with didn’t exactly help diffuse the situation. With her tongue teasing the tips of her teeth, she said, “Depends on how much she liked his bum.”

“Or,” Donna said, pushing herself up off the floor, “whether she fancied taking a gander now an’ again.” She focused her attention on Martha, who, despite herself, was still giggling. Leaning towards the other woman, Donna asked, “Was it a huge bum? Or one o’ those really fit ones? Maybe the tattoo was an improvement.”

“Donna!” Martha exclaimed, though she was laughing even harder now.

“It’s a good question though,” Rose snickered.

Martha didn’t bother to respond; shaking her head, she just reached for her daiquiri.

“That reminds me!” Donna announced. “D’you two know, the Doctor’s got a tattoo? Right there on his back, this big permanent tattoo.”

The crisp snapped in Rose’s mouth, half of it actually making its way to her tongue and half falling to her leg, bouncing against her jeans, and landing on the floor. “What?”

“Since when?” Martha added.

“Since… I think it was six months ago? Seven? We both got one.”

As Rose and Martha gaped, Donna casually reached for the bowl of crisps, scrambled around the bottom, and took a handful of the last few non-crumbs. Barely glancing at the other two, she ate them one by one, though a bit more sloppily than she intended.

“You’re havin’ us on,” Rose said.

“Me? Never,” Donna replied. “No, this is the God’s honest truth.”

Still incredulous, Rosa and Martha turned toward one another, raised eyebrows and mouthed words expressing several notions that all boiled down to, _just how many has she had and if they have matching banana tattoos, we need to get photographic evidence_.

“All right then, fine,” Rose said. “How the hell’d you talk him into it, then?”

“It was easy,” Donna replied. “Just suggested it an’ he did it.”

Another shared glance, and Rose shook her head. “No way, I don’t believe it.”

“No, neither do I,” Martha seconded, though her words were quieter and lacked the same bite of conviction.

Very simply, Donna told them, “Believe what you like…” As if to cement her point, she finished off the melted remains of her daiquiri and then grabbed the pitcher, filling the glass halfway. Martha took the pitcher next, then Rose, and in the end all that remained was clear plastic clouded by pink and tinged with the scent of strawberries and rum. They allowed the pitcher to fall sideways and the remains to leak onto the sleeping bag; the faint slurping sound and the way the drops of daiquiri managed to disappear was something they had gotten used to weeks ago.

“We should make more,” Martha said, though rather absently, and Rose nodded in agreement. Then both turned back to Donna, watching her over the edges of their glasses. They waited.

“No, that bit was a lie,” Donna said at last, an admission soon followed by crisps, the bowl itself, and cries of, “I told you so!” thrown at her.

“Oi, stop that!” Donna yelled, her arms raised to shield her face, though the fact that she was laughing made the cry a bit less threatening than it otherwise might have been. They continued their onslaught with the bits of crisps still on the sleeping bag. “Oi! Stop, you plonkers!”

Eventually, a lack of ammunition forced the other two to have mercy, though they continued glowering. Brushing the crumbs off her arms and clothes, Donna glowered right back, somewhat less good-naturedly.

“So which part of that wasn’t a lie, then?” Martha asked.

“If any,” Rose added.

After a quick glare in Rose’s direction, Donna turned to Martha and answered, “The tattoo. We both got ‘em, like I said, right there on our backs. Didn’t have a choice in the matter. One minute we’re in this meadow with these _gorgeous_ violet sunflowers, next we’re in this ruddy jail cell with these aliens who looked like Scary Spice’s mutated uncle. Apparently they were obsessed with words an’ their first word, whatever it was, mommy or ninny or tea towel, they got it tattooed on their backs right when they were kids. The Doctor said they believed it trapped the soul in the body. Trouble was, anyone, and I mean _anyone_ who visited the planet had to get the same tattoo. Apparently it was in all the universal guides, not like the Martian git reads ‘em. An’ you can’t even get rid of it with that dermal sonic o’ his.”

“So what happened?” Martha asked.

“What d’you think happened? They locked us up and made us get the bleedin’ tattoos. First time that year it would’ve been good to have something on my back.”

Another pause, and Donna didn’t even reach for her drink. Instead, her eyes wide and her mouth a thin line, she looked directly at Rose. When she did finally reach for the glass, Rose was looking down at her feet, small ankles and bare skin with dirt crowning her right heel. When she brought her head back up, Martha was pushing the story forward again, too intoxicated to notice the exchange.

“Yeah, but, how’d they know your first word? Were they psychic or something?”

Donna’s glass hit the floor with a muted thunk. A small splash and a few more slurping sounds followed. “Right, yeah, forgot to mention that,” she answered. “Mildly telepathic. ‘Course they couldn’t read the Doctor’s mind so they jus’ tattooed him with the first word that slipped through.”

Again she stopped, but this time, she leaned back against the support and crossed her arms, a small smile on her face, like a queen overlooking a theatrical production about her many wonderful attributes and gifts, just waiting for the performance to start.

Martha and Rose were too intrigued to find more things to throw at her.

“Which was?” Rose pressed, any earlier tension mostly forgotten in a haze of curiosity.

Another pause, and Rose was getting ready to find those pliers when Donna finally leaned forward, wearing a grin so wide it would have put the Doctor and the Cheshire Cat’s miracle offspring to shame. “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” she said, somehow managing it all in one go. “As in, from Mary Poppins.”

Sadly the TARDIS was devoid of crickets chirping, but the ever-present hum of intelligent but indifferent machinery was more than sufficient. And then none of them could hear even that, because hysterical laughter tended to be rather loud.

“ _Seriously_?” Rose gasped, one hand pressed to her stomach, the other one balancing her shaking body against the floor.

“I know!” Donna answered. “Should’ve expected it from Space Man.”

“What about you?” Martha managed, once she’d recovered enough to speak. “What’d you get?”

Immediately Donna straightened and crossed her arms, though if she were overlooking any performance this time, it was one directed by her mother and written by the teacher who sent her home for biting his son. Her gaze was fixed on a spot somewhere between Martha and Rose. Casually, she said, “Oh, it doesn’t matter.”

With raised eyebrows, the other two women exchanged glances. They said nothing. The TARDIS continued humming. The sleeping bag squeaked again, loudly. Donna looked from Rose to Martha and back to Rose, just sitting there and watching her. Waiting.

“Honestly, it doesn’t,” Donna insisted. “Just one o’ those silly baby words.”

“Like tea towel?” Rose said.

“Exactly. Like tea towel.”

Another exchanged glance, and with narrowed eyes Martha nodded, a sharp militaristic jerk of her chin. Rose returned the gesture, and then both turned to Donna. At the same moment, they pounced.

The next few minutes were filled with giggles, screeches, flailing limbs, and more than a few elbows jabbed into breasts and eye sockets. Cries of “Hold her!” and “Grab the shirt!” and “Get the hell off me you—ow!” created a new tapestry of background noise, and for the first time in her life Donna wished she were wearing overalls. She wished she _owned_ overalls. She wished she could shove a pair of overalls over both their heads and shove them out into a world of overall-eating cat people. With flame throwers. And claws. Lots and lots of very sharp claws.

In the end, however, Martha and Rose succeeded in getting the back of Donna’s shirt all the way up to the bottom of her bright purple bra, and the silence that followed was one of total shock or mind-numbing horror or abject pity. For a moment, Donna felt very much like a pile of used towels.

“Donna,” Rose said, her voice very quiet, “your first word was snoofle?”


End file.
